For infant, toddlers and preschoolers, the quality of care they receive is critical to their healthy development and eventual readiness for school. First Steps offers the resources that are commonly available to publicly funded early childhood programs, such as educational materials, on-site professional development, and other support.

First Steps' Child Care Quality Enhancement (QE) produces measurable improvements in the quality of care provided to young children. Each child in our affiliated centers receives FREE individual developmental assessments. Participating child care providers are selected through a competitive process that requires a strong level of commitment to QE.

Our efforts to improve the quality of child care includes affordable, high quality training to meet the needs of the local child care workforce. We offer these services for FREE.

First Steps sponsored training is certified through the SC Ceter for Child Care Career Development and includes topics in the areas of nutrition, health & safety, curriculum, child growth & developement and program administration. Best practices taught in trainings receive follow-up support in the classroom by certified Technical Assistants.

All Center staff receive additional training and development at Directors Forums.

The Parents as Teachers model and the Early Head Start Home-based Option model (a collaboration with the Charleston County School District), are both evidence-based early childhood home visitation frameworks that focus on families with children prenatal through 3 years old. Home visits are conducted weekly by certified Parent Educators and are designed to meet the needs of low income families.

The Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership (EHS-CCP) program is a federally funded grant that works to provide Early Head Start services to private child development centers by creating stable, long-term, high quality childcare for children ages 0-36 months and families with ABC Vouchers.

Program Components:

Children receive a full-day program focusing on literacy with a research-based curriculum

CCFS partners with a national literacy organization, Raising A Reader, to offer an evidence based early literacy and parent engagement program that works to improve the reading readiness skills of young children.